I am sorry that you are in the hospital. You are feeling ill. The noises are loud, people are walking in and out of rooms, and you aren’t sure of what to expect. You are probably nervous. This whole situation is a disturbance to your life. You would rather be at home — I can understand that. Few people want to …
Dear patient: Apologies from your medical student
Physician burnout has been previously described as heartbreaking, and this may be an understatement. The growing complexities of health care delivery, intricacies of documentation practices as required by Meaningful Use, and difficulties inherent to billing and reimbursement are only a few of the issues faced by residents and attending clinicians these days.
Unfortunately, these topics are still not formally taught in American medical schools.
As students, we really do not know …
Ranking your residency for the Match: Red flags to watch out for
The non-medical reader may wonder what I am complaining about. Of course, many of you have to be credentialed in your fields as well, whether law or accounting, law enforcement or public service, education, nursing or a trade. But those of you in medicine know how difficult it can be to become credentialed as a physician, either by a state for purposes of a license, or by a hospital in order …
Medical credentialing: Explaining yourself when you’re off the grid
I was glad she never asked if I had done this before.
My first nasogastric tube was placed on an elderly woman with chronic liver disease. As her illness worsened, it gradually turned her skin yellow, her abdomen swollen, and her mind foggy. One day, we realized that she was at too high a choking risk to swallow her medications herself. She would need a plastic tube to do it for …
Lessons from my first nasogastric tube
Last week, my best friend took the recertification exam in anesthesia, the so-called MOCA exam. Like a good doobie, she paid her $2,100, paid her nanny extra so she could study, took a day off in which she missed the funeral of a friend’s husband, and took the test. Wow, she must be the most awesome, most well-read, most skilled, most …
Do you want a doctor or a demotivated test-taking machine?
Amid the many ongoing changes to health care, it’s clear that better teamwork is needed in American medicine. Calls for stronger interdisciplinary collaboration have permeated position statements and policies, and organizations have begun redesigning care processes to include novel team-based approaches. Emerging data continue to affirm that strong teamwork and communication can increase the value of care.
Of the many efforts to improve teamwork, however, one potential area for significant improvement …
Improve teamwork with better selection of medical trainees
At the outset of this process of becoming a doctor, a friend and mentor of mine, a professor emeritus of medicine known as a mentor who cares deeply about his students and for his New England style dinner parties, sat me down to explain the gist of medical school.
The first two years, he explained — bowtie notwithstanding — are the equivalent of studying a language from textbooks. You must first …
Learning the language of Patient and Doctor
It’s been a long day, and you just want to decompress. My boyfriend tells me about his day. I get to hear about the insane amount of reading he has to do for graduate school, or about the occasional annoying customer he’s had to deal with at his part-time job as a bank teller. When it’s my turn to decompress, I usually gripe about a patient or two from the …
Taking care of patients who stop caring about themselves
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
Some think that it should be repealed and replaced. Others support it but feel that it needs to be improved. A few believe that it’s OK as is. I’m not writing about Obamacare — I’m describing maintenance of certification (MOC).
I will not use up my word count …
ABIM’s internal medicine specialty board and improving MOC
During my residency training in plastic surgery, I remember spending time in the offices of some of our community faculty members. These were invaluable opportunities to gain exposure to the field outside of the academic university hospital, where things were quite different.
The university was a large organization where several residency programs and hundreds of trainees were not just seamlessly integrated into the workings of the hospital, but actually required to …
How do patients really feel about students and residents?
On Thursday January 15, over one hundred Stanford Medical School graduate and medical students gathered to commemorate MLK day and remember the lives of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. On a white board that proclaimed “Black Lives Matter,” attendees wrote their thoughts. On the board, I wrote “Keep the conversation going,” and in that effort I’d like to examine one …
The medical community and complicity: Our role in the Eric Garner case
Physicians are docile. We are programmed to put the greater good above our own. We train mercilessly, work tirelessly, and bend faithfully at the alter of those we have vowed to heal. This is our birthright. This is the covenant we signed in our own blood when we took our healing oath. Decry us as they will, no one becomes a …
The fight against MOC: The spark that unites physicians
For many years, I taught a sizable chunk of our local medical school’s second-year pathology course. I was always energized by the students’ enthusiasm and desire to learn more about medicine. On the other hand, I remembered feeling their same frustrations regarding the lack of fundamental practice skills included in today’s medical school curriculum.
In fact, at our university, a group of students started a business in medicine interest group, where …
4 things we should be teaching in medical school, but aren’t
ADVERTISEMENT
Living in the trenches of a surgical internship can be a gut wrenching, lonely experience for many. The journey from medical student to resident to surgical attending is a notoriously steep trek, necessitating our long 6+ years of training. Surviving intern year remains as hard as ever despite the significantly greater resources and awareness that exists among residency programs today.
These burdens are felt by all specialties and have tragically led …
Survival pearls for surgical interns
“Katie, If you go into surgery, you’re going to miss patients.” It was three in the morning in the ED; the resident was feeling the strain of a 24-hour trauma call, and I was loving it. I had spent the past half hour with a lovely, older woman whose foot had gone through the floor of her vehicle in a crash. We chatted about where she had been traveling, and …
Reflecting on an orthopedic surgery rotation
I showed up that morning on the inpatient service as a part of my elective. Surprisingly, I found three other medical students present: 1 third year, 2 second years.
The fourth year of medical school has many perks as I have been told by those senior to me. Once the application process gets underway, I have been advised to live every day as though it were my last. Personally, I liked …
Evaluating medical students: Beware misleading first impressions
Last year, I had the opportunity to attend the American Medical Association’s interim meeting in Dallas, one of the two annual conferences held by the organization. I went to the meeting to present at a research symposium, but I stuck around for a few extra days because I was curious about the inner workings of organized medicine. As someone interested in health care systems and the delivery of medical care, …
The AMA: One medical student’s perspective
I recently dug up a copy of the personal statement I wrote when I was applying for residency. I’ve said before that I think these personal statements aren’t worth much. But somehow, I now feel compelled to prove it by ripping apart my own personal statement.
So here we go:
It was the same situation that I had been in dozens of times.
Well, not really. I mean, I was only a third-year …
A medical student’s personal statement: Deconstructed
Dear Internal Medicine Community:
ABIM clearly got it wrong. We launched programs that weren’t ready and we didn’t deliver an MOC program that physicians found meaningful. We want to change that.
Nearly 80 years ago, the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians founded the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). ABIM was charged with distinguishing the discipline of internal medicine from other forms of practice by creating uniform standards …
ABIM announces immediate changes to MOC program
Dr. Richard Gunderman published an article that shared the story of Melissa Chen, a 35-year-old radiology resident in her final year at the University of Texas San Antonio. While her road to medical school was somewhat unconventional (it is great story, I highly suggest reading it), Chen is not your typical medical school student — one whom has persistently endured a rather standard, run-of-the-mill path through graduate school and …
Solving the problem of medical student debt
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
